Tag Archives: Trade

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — As the United States and 11 other countries prepare to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement later today, 35 leading public health and medical groups today urged Congress to support a TPP provision that protects life-saving tobacco control measures from tobacco industry legal attacks under the agreement. Read on>

Making Priorities into our Reality This year has been one filled with milestones for the public health and tobacco control communities. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), call on governments to strengthen the implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Reducing tobacco deaths is now… Read the full article >

And it’s only going to get worse for them. I was asked two weeks ago to blog about my end-of-year thoughts. Something told me to procrastinate, and I am glad I did. Within 24 hours before putting fingers to keyboard, good news came from afar. First, after several years of litigation, Australia has emerged victorious… Read the full article >

Last week, after many years of painful negotiation, the final text for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement was released. This is the text that the U.S. Congress and Parliaments from 11 other countries will consider. At the moment, it is far from a slam dunk that it will pass into international law. ASH and the… Read the full article >

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Megan Arendt Office: 202-659-4310 Email: arendtm@ash.org Tobacco Carve-Out in TPP, Major Victory for Public Health Removes New Weapon for Tobacco Industry WASHINGTON, DC – Monday, October 5, 2015 – In a major victory for public health, negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement concluded this morning with built-in protections to prevent… Read the full article >

No final consensus has been reached on whether any exclusion would target only tobacco companies or shield a wider range of government regulations from legal action, but Australia’s Andrew Robb is optimistic about his country’s push for a broad carve-out for both health and environmental regulations. “I think we’re on track, but there’s not a… Read the full article >

By Chris Bostic, for Health and Trade Network As the role of tobacco companies in trade agreements on both sides of the Atlantic has been highlighted by a series of controversial events in recent weeks, this HaT paper is presented as a summary of the current key issues in the TPP and the TTIP, with implications… Read the full article >

But tobacco farmers are not part of the game Mitch McConnell and other pro-tobacco politicians have become very vocal over the past two weeks in their opposition to a potential partial tobacco exemption in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. And just as in so many other political debates, they are citing the plight of the… Read the full article >

Big Tobacco is pushing back against a strict anti-smoking provision in the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and has enlisted the support of the most powerful Republican in the Senate to help quash it. The ire of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other tobacco-state lawmakers could throw a wrench into the delicate negotiations to… Read the full article >

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is warning U.S. officials negotiating a massive trans-Pacific trade agreement for President Obama not to target tobacco growers in a final deal. McConnell said singling out the tobacco industry would set a dangerous precedent for future trade deals, in a letter to Obama’s top trade representative. The missive from… Read the full article >

Australia’s legal bill for defending its cigarette plain packaging legislation is set to hit $50 million as it battles to contain a case brought by tobacco giant Philip Morris before a tribunal in Singapore. And that is just for the first stage. If in September the three-person extraterritorial tribunal decides Australia has a case to answer, the hearing… Read the full article >

In 2012, Australia implemented tough anti-tobacco regulations, requiring that all cigarettes be sold in plain, logo-free brown packages dominated by health warnings. Philip Morris Asia filed suit, claiming that this violated its intellectual-property rights and would damage its investments. The company sued Australia in domestic court and lost. But it had another card to play. In… Read the full article >

(Reuters) – Ukraine has suspended a case it was pursuing through the World Trade Organization aimed at overturning Australia’s strict tobacco packaging laws, a WTO panel of adjudicators said in a statement published on Wednesday. Ukraine asked the panel to suspend the proceedings on May 28 and said it will try to find a mutually… Read the full article >

WASHINGTON — An ambitious 12-nation trade accord pushed by President Obama would allow foreign corporations to sue the United States government for actions that undermine their investment “expectations” and hurt their business, according to a classified document. Read more>

This week, several representatives of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) will be attending the World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Abu Dhabi. WCTOH is a five-day scientific conference where presenters highlight the latest developments in tobacco control and the efforts around the world to reduce tobacco use. This year, the conference theme is “Tobacco… Read the full article >

By Senator Elizabeth Warren The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries. Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers? Consumers? Small businesses? Taxpayers? Or the biggest multinational corporations in the world? One strong hint is… Read the full article >

Remarks by the President at Meeting of the Export Council December 11, 2014 The big bugaboo that’s lifted up there is tobacco companies suing poorer countries to make sure that anti-smoking legislation is banned, or at least tying them up with so much litigation that ultimately smaller countries cave. Those are issues that I think… Read the full article >

Australian expertise in tobacco control is helping save lives around the world, but that work could be undone. Every day, 5500 children in India start using tobacco. If they continue the habit, as many do, the illnesses brought about by tobacco addiction will kill about half of them. In the meantime, Big Tobacco is allowed… Read the full article >

An ISDS carve-out in the TPPA would be good for tobacco control, but not good enough. There has been some scuttlebutt in trade circles over the past weeks about a possible US proposal in the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations to exempt tobacco measures from the investment chapter. The effect would be to deny the… Read the full article >

WTO members meeting as the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council on 28–29 October 2014 responded to the latest developments on plain packaging for tobacco products, exchanged views on innovation, and heard about plans to make it easier to make sense of the huge amount of information they have shared with each other… Read the full article >

Almost 200 countries signed the World Health Organisation’s Tobacco Control Convention and are obliged to take measures to curb tobacco use. But the industry has hit back. A big tobacco company, Philip Morris, has taken Uruguay and Australia to tribunals under bilateral investment treaties, claiming billions of dollars in compensation for the two countries’ measures… Read the full article >

By Krista Hughes WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) – The United States has floated excluding tobacco products from a key section of a 12-nation Pacific trade deal and signaled it may present a formal proposal to trading partners at talks in Australia, sources briefed on the negotiations said. Dropping tobacco from the investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, section… Read the full article >

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is pressing the Obama administration to protect his state’s tobacco industry in a trade deal. McConnell is pressuring U.S. negotiators to ensure that tobacco companies can take part in the dispute settlement portion of the trade deal, with talks scheduled next week on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact… Read the full article >